Method Studios modeler, Mike Hong, shows us how he used multiple software packages to create his first orc, Garrosh Hellscream

I always try to push myself to make 3D art in a variety of subjects. This is because I can learn a lot of techniques during the creation process by learning how to use new software. I also believe that it's the best way to learn new skills.

I had made a few human characters in the past, but hadn't yet made any fantasy creatures. Then I remembered one of the illustrations from Blizzard Entertainment. Orcs are one of the most common and fun subjects to create in 3D, and I'd never tried to make one before ? so since I'm a big fan of World of Warcraft, I decided to make this character illustration as my next project.

To start, even though I had a specific illustration as my goal, I still needed to gather more references of this character to create accurate details and the parts hidden in the illustration.

Modeling the body

I made the body in ZBrush first because it's the main object that will hold all the other accessories. It's not human, but it still needs the correct anatomy. I tried to find general orc character proportions and blended it with the basic human anatomy structure. This will be a still image, so I didn't make plans to do a lot of sculpting for areas that will be hidden by the armor.

My sculpting started from DynaMesh. Usually, once I'm happy with the overall form, I retopologize it and put more details when topology is ready. But in this case, I used ZRemesher ? it doesn't generate perfect geometry but was more than enough for my purposes.

Knucklehead Kyle on Wed, 25 June 2014 8:51am Great work, Mike! Thank you for taking the time to prepare this tutorial. I love the tertiary details on the props, and for some reason I really like the pants despite its simple design, some nice sculpting there. - being a lazy TD that I am, I'd probably have simulated it in Marvelous Designer as well and maybe ZRemesh.